There is a simple question that every porn collector going through reboot must be able to answer. To delete or keep?
As one guy asked the forum:
Did you all get rid of all your porn when you rebooted? It’s freaking me out, the emotional attachment I’ve got to it: the hard drive filled with a carefully-curated collection; the alternate Internet profile specifically for porn surfing; maybe some old pics and homemade movies of my ex-girlfriends. That last is especially scary to get rid of–it’s irreplaceable!
Answers by other guys on the delete question:
Yes, everything has to go. It’s the only way to be sure and it’s strangely liberating after the sheer fear and intensity of being without it has worn off. It is a very *emotional* decision because let’s face it we relied on those vids and such to give us some “instant intimacy” when we ourselves were without someone to be intimate with or just as likely had someone but *preferred* porn to their company. Porn hijacks the brains sexuality and turns it into a willing servant.
The most opportune time to delete a stash is right after you have, once again, orgasmed to porn. You may have or may not have binged but the point is that is the most likely time to want to change because it is an addiction and it’s really hard to beat, say, an alcohol addiction, if all we have to do is go into our closet and tear off the duct tape on a box full of scotch.
Only one choice – get rid of it (all of it!) Anything that can trigger you in the future needs to go. That’s also why locking down you computer from Internet porn is a must. Once you are recovered, you will look back and think “Why did I want to keep that stuff?” Holding on to stuff in any form seems similar to an alcoholic keeping a stash of vodka somewhere.
Strength needed to delete
I would burn the hard drive and irreplaceable girlfriend stuff onto a bunch of DVD’s. Put them in a small box. Wrap it with duct tape. Then wrap it with brown bag paper. Duct tape again. Keep wrapping layers until the thing is ridiculously enclosed. Such that it would take an hour or two to open it. Then hide it somewhere. Or bury it. Perhaps have someone hold onto it for you. Or put it in a safety deposit box.
Then go ahead and delete everything from the hard-drive. The internet profile will just have to go. Or maybe there’s a way to burn that too. But at any rate, you will still “have” all of your stuff. You won’t have to feel like you threw it all of that pleasure and fun and sexiness away, but it will be at a very safe distance while you heal your brain.
After you reboot you might find the strength to throw all that stuff out. Or maybe you will just keep the weird parcel around as a reminder to keep you “clean.”
Yes. Delete it.
I had a large collection of VHS/DVD stuff. I tried forever to get rid of my habits while keeping the collection. It never worked. Then one day I took a large hammer, put everything in a trash bag, put on some safety goggles and smashed the f*ck out of everything in that bag.
Like EFS White said, I felt instantly cleaner. It helped me immensely. The main reason I failed a few months after that was because I didn’t know how to defend against internet porn.
So last month, I relapsed and afterward I asked my brother to be my accountability partner and I got Covenant Eyes for my computer. Just the act of setting up this filter/accountability software on my computer made me feel instantly better. I immediately sped up my reboot process. I could feel some of the positive effects right away. The confidence– knowing that I’d identified a weak spot in my defenses and had built a fortified wall on that exact spot– it gave me a huge psychological boost.
Don’t think of it as money wasted– look at it as a small sacrifice for your life– which is worth more than all the money in the world. Plus doing this will keep you from being tempted to spend money on porn in the future.
Hitting helps
It’s really important to physically destroy it. We’re living in a time where we’re inclined to sell, trade or give away anything and everything. When I was contemplating destroying my collection, there was this little voice saying, “hey, why don’t you give it away to someone else”… haha, what a terrible idea. Here I have this horrible poisonous collection of images which encourage me to physically abuse myself and cause problems in my life– and I’m going to give that to another human being?”
No. I happily took the hammer and bashed away.
Like I advised on another thread. Destroy it and then go buy yourself a nice steak dinner to celebrate. I think some things require a mandatory celebration and this is one of them.
One of my most successful early reboot attempts involved me deciding to abstain from PMO for 90 days (though I still fapped every few weeks because I didn’t know how to deal with the physiological issues of being full of fluids– and I later learned how to overcome the discomfort)– what I did was set aside something nice and expensive that I was going to buy myself for meeting the challenge. It was difficult too– because some creep at work had some porno mags and he left them in a storage area– and when I went looking for something I accidentally found them– and looking at them caused my heart to race and the dopamine to start flowing. I was still able to walk away and put it out of my mind.
Rewards come later
So after the 90 days, I was so happy with myself– I didn’t even feel like going out and buying the expensive treat I had set as a prize. But I forced myself to go out and do it anyway. After all, I’d made a deal with myself. Sure, I had relapses afterward because I was still learning how to battle temptation, but it was an important battle in the war. And that’s how you have to look at it. It’s a war. You have to have some episodes that you look back upon as major battles you have won– those battles which turned the tide in the war.
So setting aside a long term reward is one way to battle the short term desire for a cheap dopamine hit. Another thing to do when you feel that destructive urge to relapse is to just take a cold shower and then hit the gym. It works for me everytime. Lots of ways to set yourself up to win. You have to just follow through.
Thread: The Sunk Cost Fallacy
Saw this on r/Stopgaming and thought it would apply here too!
Say I bought concert tickets a month in advance, and they were expensive too. But then the day of the concert comes, and my date gets sick and I have three hours of homework.
The tickets are a sunk cost at this point. But the mistake is assuming that since I paid I now have to go to the concert. In reality going to the concert is just going to make me and my made up gf miserable, and we would be happier not going at all.
It is explained a lot better here.
How does this apply to no PMO?
First: Delete your stash. It matters not how much time and money went into it, the stash is a sunk cost. The thing that will make you happy NOW is to delete it. The money that went into that stash is GONE now. There is no point in “getting your money’s worth” out of it, its too late.
Second: If you have a device that you got ONLY for PMO, get rid of it now. It doesn’t matter how much you spent on that thing its not worth it, sell it. Trying to reclaim any more value than the sell value of the device will only cause you misery. (Only if your device purely used for pmo though)
If you are willing to broaden your definition of a cost to include time and opportunities, the applications of the sunk cost fallacy increase dramatically.
Its easy to wallow in pity, to become absorbed in the opportunities lost due to PMO. Those opportunities are a sunk cost now spent building a lifestyle that is causing you misery. Don’t motivate yourself trying to reclaim those opportunities, just like the PMO stash those opportunities are gone. Motivate yourself with the clean slate of leaving your baggage behind!
Learn from yesterday of course, but live for today. And hope that if you do what must be done tomorrow will fall into place.
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